


Stay

by skysedge



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Points of View, Quartet Night Apartment Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 01:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19307797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skysedge/pseuds/skysedge
Summary: This can't last forever.





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> The Fiction/Non-Fiction Drama CDs just gave me a lot of feelings that somehow resulted in this drabble about fruit. O/

It's nine-fifteen on a Thursday morning and the penthouse that houses the members of Quartet Night is deep in discussion.  
  
"It's peaches," Ranmaru is saying. "Peaches look more like butts. End of discussion."  
  
"You're too simple, Ran-ran." Reiji raises a finger as if he's teaching a class. "Yes, a peach looks more like a cute little butt, but a strawberry is full of connotation."  
  
"But-"  
  
"There is a museum dedicated to strawberries in Belgium," Ai interrupts, not looking up from his phone.  
  
"See, Ai agrees with me," Ranmaru laughs. "That's not sexy."  
  
"Yes but think of the potential." Reiji leans forward with a devious smile  
"Are you feeding someone that strawberry? Is it part of a sexy dessert?"  
  
"Feeder," Ranmaru mutters.  
  
"Don't kinkshame me."  
  
"It's perfectly possible to feed someone a peach as well," Ai adds. "And good for them. A peach contains vitamins A, C, B1, B2, B6, and minerals such as potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, sulfur, chlorine, manganese, copper and iron."  
  
Camus, who has been forced to listen to this drivel while having his morning tea, really doesn't care. The argument is stupid, like them. His morning had been so peaceful before they had all woken up. Camus drops another sugar cube into his tea and gives them each a withering look. He's not going to get involved.  
  
The room smells of tea and fruit juice, and the fading scent of Ranmaru's first morning cigarette. The radio chatters from the corner and the dishwasher phisses and rattles from the kitchen. Life has been so noisy since Reiji moved them all here, so busy and unrefined. He hates it. Abhors it. Every second here among these oafs is misery.   
  
And yet...  
  
It's easier to relax with their inane chatter around him. Reiji had boiled the kettle for his tea and Ai had brought his newspaper. Some rare mornings, before the others get up, Ranmaru has even cooked him breakfast. Even while he internally monologues about their stupidity he can feel the edges of his lips twitch into a smile.  
  
"What do you think, Camus? Peaches or strawberries?"  
  
"Which is the sexier food?"  
  
"Ambergris is also an aphrodisiac."  
  
They all stare at Camus waiting for an answer. Hopeful, guileless stares. He almost feels bad for them.  
  
They don't know about his agenda. At least he doesn't think they know but who can say what goes on in their little minds. Almost all of him will always belong to his queen and country. That will never change. But a sliver of his heart has begun to reside here for better or for worse.  
  
"The food is irrelevant," he says. "Nothing is sexier than the total submission of your partner."  
  
He's content to stay.  
  
  
Everything about this is fucking stupid. Ranmaru watches as Camus stirs his tea after answering, giving a smug smile. One day he'll knock that smirk right off his ugly face. But maybe not over an argument like this. That'd make him just as dumb.  
  
"Your opinion doesn't count," Ranmaru says, throwing Camus a dirty look. "You're not interested unless it's covered in sugar."  
  
"My data suggests that it's easy to obtain the correct equipment to cover one's sexual partner in sugar," Ai says in his annoying flat voice and Ranmaru turns the glare upon him instead. "Or to dress them in mock lingerie made of candy."  
  
"Not. Fucking. Sexy."  
  
Reiji saunters between the couches to lean on the back of where Ranmaru is sitting, smiling in that evil way he does whenever he's up to something. He leans heavily on the couch, his stupid fluffy hair all over the place, and holds a finger to his lips like he's going to tell Ranmaru a secret.  
  
"I don't wanna know."  
  
"Maybe neither Ai-Ai or Myu-chan understand what sexy means," Reiji begins anyway and Ranmaru hates himself for snorting in laughter because he's not wrong. "But they're pretty smart when it comes to other stuff."  
  
"Like sucking all the fun out of life?"  
  
Even as he says it, Ranmaru is laughing and even though Camus hasn't changed his expression and Ai is just staring, Ranmaru is sure they find this funny as well. He knows them well enough to tell. When the hell had _that_ happened?  
  
"So what are you an expert of, Camus?" Ranmaru asks with a sneer. "Little girly cupcakes?"  
  
"Don't be bitter because you can't appreciate art."  
  
"You don't even know what bitter is you use so much fucking sugar."  
  
"Now now boys, be nice!"  
  
Reiji is a natural born peacekeeper. He has his work cut out for him here. Well too bad, it was his idea to move them in together like this. Besides, Ranmaru _is_ being nice. These days his fights with Camus tend to stay as banter, one of them always backing off if it gets too real. Reiji frets like a mom and Ai just sighs at them but whatever, it's not like they would understand. Anyway none of them have really judged him for his temper in weeks. Months. They just know him now, and accept him as he is. The same as he does for them.  
  
Fuck. It's too early for that mushy crap.  
  
"I'd be _real_ nice if I had a cute girl with a butt like a peach," he says, flipping Reiji off and only getting a smile in return. "Get off my case."  
  
"There was a case in a crime podcast I was listening to recently" Ai begins and Ranmaru can sense the random shift in topic before it comes. "A suicide in 1933. A student jumped into an active volcano and many others followed suit at later times. Psychologists have been analysing it to try and see why these 'hotspots' occur and..."  
  
Ranmaru zones out completely. Ai hadn't even made that into a pun. And it's too real, all of that. Too close to home. The others don't notice or don't say a word if they do and so help him but he's grateful for it.  
  
They don't know about the long nights spent on the edge of rooftops. At least he doesn't think they know but he doesn't trust them an inch to not have listened to gossip from somewhere. They know about the bands and about his constant search for himself and that's enough, almost too much.  
  
His soul will always belong to rock. That's eternal. But it's comfortable here, with these idiots who don't push him away.   
  
"That's fucking morbid, Ai," he interrupts. "Can't you just watch porn like a normal guy?"  
  
He wants to stay.  
  
  
Butts, domination, suicide and porn. Standard conversation topics for a morning in this household. Sometimes Reiji wonders what Shining would do if he heard them carry on like this, all so far from the personalities they push forward when under the spotlight.  
  
"Keep it PG-13!" he whines, poking Ranmaru in the cheek. "It's not even midday!"  
  
Maybe Reiji himself isn't so different on or off camera. He knows that the others think it's because he's simple, or naive. He knows it because that's how he wants it to be.  
  
"Reiji, you appear to have forgotten that you started this conversation," Ai points out, raising one thin eyebrow. "Besides, we are in an adult space."  
  
"Unfortunately none of you are adults," Camus replies and Reiji summons his most childlike pout.  
  
"We pay bills, we _have_ to be adults!"  
  
Ranmaru groans and gets to his feet, beginning to pace the living room.  
  
"Don't remind me that I share the bills with you guys."  
  
"Aww, don't be so cold!" Reiji flings himself into Ranmaru's vacant seat with a grin. "You love us really."  
  
"No," they all say, and Reiji howls with laughter.  
  
Since he had rounded them up here, he's been laughing a lot more. Oh he jokes and grins when in public but at home it had always been different. His old place was silent, empty, cold. True, he hadn't needed to put pants on when making his morning coffee or eat his desserts straight away so that Camus didn't steal them but this was better, so much better, than being on his own.  
  
"Do we have work today?" he asks aloud, already knowing the answer. "Wanna go on a road trip down to the coast?"  
  
"You have a meeting with the radio guys," Ranmaru says. "I'm not covering for you again."  
  
"And Ranmaru and I have a television appearance," Ai states. "And I'm not covering for _him_ again."  
  
"I don't want to go anywhere with you imbeciles," Camus says flatly.  
  
"What about tomorrow?"  
  
They all mumble excuses but it's not an immediate no. They've come a long way since they met. With their help, Reiji doesn't know if there's a limit to how much further they can go.  
  
And they don't know about the darkness in him. At least he doesn't think they know but maybe he's not as good at hiding it as he thinks, not now that they're so close. Half of him will always be in the past, reaching for a phone which has long since stopped ringing. Half of him will always belong to Aine. But the other half belongs here, with these difficult, brilliant individuals, with the harmonies he had never dreamed of, with something irreplaceable.   
  
"I'll bring a bento for everyone," he coaxes. "Promise."  
  
He needs them to stay.  
  
  
"I would enjoy that."  
  
Ai sees the way they look at him in surprise for expressing this opinion and wonders what he has done wrong this time. The tone? The phrasing? Or is it just that they are not used to him expressing such simple opinions? This is something he has been working on since moving in here, now that he has less and less time to drop the pretence of being anything like them at all.  
  
"So long as the AC in your car has been fixed," he adds and they all seem to settle at that.  
  
"Just for you, Ai-Ai!" Reiji tells him. "Sorry you got so hot last time."  
  
"Oi, where's my apology?" Ranmaru growls, spinning around to face them all again.  
  
"It was impossible to savour an ice-cream," says Camus.  
  
"It wasn't your fault," Ai says and the smile Reiji gives him is a real one. "I just don't cope well with extremes of temperature and lack of ventilation."  
  
"Just say you're a winter person," Ranmaru advises. "Less weird."  
  
"Which makes him more sensible than either of you."  
  
As Ranmaru and Camus begin a usual bickering session, Ai returns Reiji's smile. It feels a little more natural every time. He can relax around these people, almost. More than he can around anyone else.  
  
They don't know that he's not human. At least, he doesn't think they suspect, but if living here has taught him anything it's that humans are unpredictable and are good at ignoring inconvenient truths.   
  
He was built for this. This is his purpose. But it's more than that, more than someone else's plan. He looks between each of them, the way they both fight and laugh so easily together, and his cooling units kick into overdrive. He loves them, each of them, something data can't quantify. And he can't stay, not forever, but oh how he _wants_ to.  
  
All of this will need to come to an end too soon. Perhaps they feel it. Perhaps that's why they all pretend to hold each other at arms length, to tolerate, to begrudge.  
  
"Perhaps," he says aloud, "someone should go and buy us some strawberries."  
  
"Took the words right out of my fucking mouth," Ranmaru agrees.  
  
"Aha, so I win after all!" Reiji throws his hands in the air with a victorious whoop.  
"I knew you guys were just teasing."  
  
"I refuse to share a portion."  
  
"I'll go," Ai interjects before Camus can start another fight. "Try to not kill each other while I'm out."  
  
He leaves them pretending not to get along. Perhaps it's better that way. 


End file.
